View from the FringeNewsletter of the New England Rug Society

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November 15 Meeting: Koos de Jong on Saddle Rugs from China and Beyond

Vol. 21 No. 2 November 2013 www.ne-rugsociety.org

Note New Meeting Place!

Time: 7:00 p.m.

Place: Durant-Kenrick House, 286 Waverley Avenue,

Newton Centre, MA

Directions: From Boston and east, take Mass Pike to exit

17 and follow signs for Boston/Newton Centre, making a

U-turn over the Pike. At Newton Centre sign, go RIGHT on

Centre St. for 0.1 miles. Go LEFT on Franklin St. for 0.3

miles. Turn RIGHT on Waverley and go 0.2 miles. House is

on LEFT.

From Rt. 128 and west, take Mass Pike to exit 17,

turn RIGHT onto Centre Street and follow directions above.

From Watertown Square: Take Galen Street (Rt.

16) toward Newton Centre for 0.4 miles. Continue to

Washington St. toward West Newton/Newton Centre,

making a U-turn over the Pike. At Newton Centre sign, go

RIGHT on Centre Street and follow directions above.

Parking: Park on the even-number side of Waverley

Avenue or Kenrick Street. A driveway leading up to the

Durant-Kenrick House has four parking places; these may

be used for unloading supplies or dropping off people but

not for parking during the meeting.

Food: Members whose last names begin with H through P

will provide food. Please arrive before 6:45 to set up and

stay to clean up afterwards.

Absorbing and emulating the horse-riding culture of the

nomadic peoples on their northwestern borders, the Chinese

were among the earliest creators of practical and beautiful

textiles and tack for their horses. Koos de Jong has recently

published an extensive study of the history of these articles,

Dragon & Horse: Saddle Rugs and Other Horse Tack from China and Beyond. His talk for NERS—titled “The Dragon

Chasing the Horse, or Was It the Other Way Around?”—will

focus on rugs made to go over and under saddles, saddle

flaps, and horse blankets. Looking to Chinese painting,

sculpture, and applied arts for visual clues, he will address

the dating and geographic origin of these saddle rugs and

will assess how “Chinese” they really are. 

Koos de Jong is an art historian and past member of

the scientific staff at the Historical Museum in Amsterdam.

Over the course of his career he held directorial posts in

numerous museums and art-related institutions in the

Netherlands and published widely on subjects ranging from

Dutch medieval art to modern ceramics. Since his retirement

in 2009 he has focused his scholarly research on East Asian

art; in addition, he is a private collector of Chinese art and

oriental carpets.

NERS members are encouraged to bring Chinese rugs,

especially saddle covers and other horse-related items, for a

post-lecture show-and-tell.

Koos de Jong discussing a Chinese saddle rug

2 View from the Fringe

September Meeting Review: Walter Denny on Carpets in New Museums and Galleries of Islamic Art

On September 6, NERS veteran speaker Walter Denny

opened the new season with a talk titled “Islamic Carpets

and New Museums of Islamic Art: What’s Happening?”

For the past six years, Walter has been a consultant to the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, mainly involved

in the renovation and reopening in 2011 of the Met’s galleries

of Islamic Art. During that period he has observed similar

projects in other major museums.

Walter’s first image showed the recent reinstallation

of the Ardabil Carpet—perhaps the world’s most famous

rug—at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It is

now displayed lying flat, behind very specialized glass, and

is only fully illuminated one minute out of thirty. Walter

proceeded to the new Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar

(1). Noting with amazement the MIA’s ability to amass an

entire collection in just the last few years, he called the effort

a tribute to the director’s energy, moxie, and large budget.

As an example, he cited the stunning Schwartzenberg

Carpet, acquired from Vienna, with huge sums expended

for acquisition and cleaning. By contrast, Walter disparaged

the Louvre’s new Islamic galleries, at least with respect to

carpets, which he said were disappointingly selected and

displayed (2). Later in the talk he added, “This is not

a ‘dis-the-Louvre’ lecture; I have one of those in my computer,

but this is not it.”

Continuing to other museums housing Islamic art,

Walter praised the David Collection in Copenhagen, and

looked forward to the opening of the new Aga Khan Museum

in Toronto. He mentioned that the carpets and textiles in

the George Walter Vincent Smith Museum, in Springfield,

MA, which has been under renovation for a number of years,

still aren’t back on public display. He noted new galleries in

Detroit and Cleveland but lamented the small display space

alloted to Islamic art in Cleveland.

Following this “tour,” Walter understandably spent the

most time talking about the new galleries at the Met, which

expanded the space available for the display of Islamic art by

35 to 40 percent, most of which has been used for carpets

and textiles. Even with increased space, there remain many

constraints on carpet and textile presentation, including

factors of wall height, lighting, platforms, and hanging

systems. The Met has set conservation requirements for

carpets and textiles: silks can be displayed for only three

months and pile carpets for twelve to twenty-four. Following

exposure, carpets and textiles are stored for five to six years.

Walter noted that the Doha museum doesn’t practice such

1. A gallery of the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar

View from the Fringe 3

rotation: its collection has fantastic items but little depth,

so pieces must be kept on display. He maintained, “With

sufficient depth, rotations are a blessing, not a curse.”

By increasing display opportunities, he explained, they help

attract new donations and bolster the prospective donor’s

confidence that gifts will be shown rather than just linger

in storage.

Beyond the issue of rotation, Walter addressed the

broader question, “What do we show?” He observed

a deep-seated museum prejudice favoring the “traditional

heavyweights”—antique carpets from Persia and Anatolia.

Two prominent twentieth-century collectors and museum

donors, James Ballard and Joseph McMullan, nevertheless

bucked this trend and collected both classical and non-

classical pieces, which they subsequently donated to the

Met and (in Ballard’s case) to the St. Louis Art Museum.

Walter himself professed some fondness for “wild cards”

from outside classical Persian and Anatolian weaving

traditions: for example, the Love Carpet (named for its

donor) in the Met, a finely woven seventeenth-century silk

rug filled with European pictorial motifs. He also noted

that museums are now willing to show fragments, since

the public has grown more tolerant of them and they’re

generally much easier to display. Still focusing on the

Met, Walter mentioned another challenge peculiar to this

institution: the Robert Lehman Collection, whose many

disparate objects, including rugs and textiles, are exhibited

together in a separate wing of the museum and have their

own display rules.

Even after a particular object has been selected for

exhibition, there are sometimes difficult challenges in

preparing it. For example, getting the Emperor’s Carpet—

a sixteenth-century Safavid Persian court rug—ready for

display required a massive undertaking and expenditure.

Previous restoration, including eight hundred patches,

were painstakingly removed. All told, the giant carpet (25’

x 11’) required eighteen thousand person-hours of work.

It additionally needed epigraphic interpretation, which

involved deciphering and translating the damaged Persian

inscriptions in its border.

Walter next considered the focus and direction

of research in museum carpet and textile collections.

Structural analysis continues at the forefront, aided by

new technology such as smaller and more affordable

microscopes. Dye analysis can lead to surprising

discoveries: Walter showed a “classical” Anatolian carpet

he’d exhibited and published because it fit his theories, only

to find out from its dyestuffs that it was a fake. On the other

hand, such research has sometimes exonerated rugs: the

Salting carpets, for example, were for a time considered

nineteenth-century Turkish forgeries but are once again

viewed as sixteenth-century Persian court weavings.

The Anhalt Carpet (3) is another rug redeemed by

analysis. It was acquired by the Met in 1946 as sixteenth-

century Persian, but in 1973 was judged a fake by three

luminaries of rug scholarship: Friedrich Spuhler, May

Beattie, and Charles Grant Ellis. Their reasons were different:

Ellis claimed the rug had the wrong yellow color; Beattie

considered its condition too good; and Spuhler cited

design imperfections that, in his view, wouldn’t have been

Walter Denny on Carpets in New Museums and Galleries, cont.

2. One level of the new Islamic art wing, Louvre, Paris

4 View from the Fringe

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consistent with a sixteenth-century origin. Walter challenged

these dismissals. Close examination showed plenty of wear:

all the browns had been replaced, some quite crudely. Color

analysis revealed the source of the yellow to be larkspur,

used in carpets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

but not much since. And comparable design flaws appear on

other carpets of that period, including the Ardabil.

Many more rugs, Walter noted, have languished under

a similar shadow of suspicion. The Trinitarias Carpet, in the

National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, was

originally believed to be Persian, then labeled a fake, and

lately judged to be a great Mughal carpet.

Walter closed his talk with a summary of the biggest

challenges facing museums today. One is the high price

of acquiring museum-worthy carpets, with wealthy Doha

and the future Louvre Abu Dhabi setting the pace. Another

is display and storage, given that the weavings, often very

large, can be on view for only a small percentage of the time.

Following the presentation, attendees had many

questions. To a query about the type of glass used for carpet

display, Walter replied that the best glass was very expensive,

and that all varieties of glass emphasize the separation of

the visitor from the artwork. Asked about the new Textile

Museum, Walter responded that despite his great fondness

for the longtime TM “home” on S Street, the new building

will have more exhibition space, higher ceilings, and climate

control—the lack of which hindered display of the TM

collections and made it difficult to get loans. To questions

about conservation and cleaning approaches, Walter replied,

“We don’t restore anymore; we conserve,” and indicated that

the Met does not wash its carpets, although some other

institutions do. Finally, a member asked whether, given the

challenges that Walter had described, museums would

turn more to smaller, non-classical rugs that would be less

expensive to acquire, conserve, store, and display. Walter

answered that yes, institutions like the Met were moving

in this direction.

Our great thanks to Walter for sharing his knowledge

of the issues involved in displaying Islamic art—carpets in

particular—at the Metropolitan and other museums around

the world.

Jim Adelson

Walter Denny on Carpets in New Museums and Galleries, cont.

3. Installing the Anhalt Carpet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

View from the Fringe 5

1. Lawrence at ALMA, about to introduce his audience to

Deco-to-Modernist hooked rugs

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The Textile Museum Bids Farewell to S Street

Taking its theme from the exhibition “Out of Southeast Asia:

Art That Sustains,” the Textile Museum Fall Symposium, held

October 12–13, included six lively presentations on textiles

of Indonesia, East Timor, Laos, and Thailand, followed the next

day by a large and spirited show-and-tell (2). At the farewell

reception preceding the symposium, attendees joined

throngs of other TM members in celebrating the museum’s

Lawrence Kearney to Head Skinner Rug Department

Gary Richards’s retirement from Skinner had a number of

us—sellers and buyers alike—worried that the specialty

carpet sales begun thirty years ago by the late Louise

Woodhead Feuerstein (see p. 9) would now be discontinued.

We are therefore relieved and delighted that Skinner has

hired NERS member and frequent speaker (see pp. 6–8)

Lawrence Kearney (1) as Specialist in the Department of

Oriental Rugs and Carpets. Lawrence is already well into

organizing his first rug sale, scheduled for January 25, 2014.

He is being assisted at Skinner by Erika Jorjorian, whom we

welcome as a new member of NERS. Our congratulations to

you both!

eighty-eight years on S Steet. Brand new and much larger

quarters on the Foggy Bottom campus of George Washington

University are now under construction and are expected to

open in October 2014. (At our February 28 NERS meeting,

TM curator Lee Talbot will tell members about the “new TM”

and its inaugural exhibition; see the next issue of this

newsletter for details.)

2. At the Fall Symposium show-and-tell, the last one at the S Street location of the Textile Museum, NERS member

Jeff Spurr comments on a much-admired weft-ikat ceremonial cloth (cepuk) from Bali or neighboring Nusa Penida.

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October Meeting Review: Lawrence Kearney on Deco-to-Modernist Hooked Rugs

On October 4, at ALMA, longtime member Lawrence

Kearney spoke on a topic new to NERS, in a presentation

entitled “Art Deco and Modernist Hooked Rugs.” He started

by outlining three major design categories into which these

rugs, made in America between 1920 and 1960, could

be sorted—“Art Deco,” “hybrid Deco,” and “Modernist.”

Nevertheless, he emphasized that his categories were not

hard and fast, observing, “Deco designers seem to have

been ready to appropriate any idea from any culture, as

long as the resultant design was striking and capable of

infinite stylization.”

In his introduction, Lawrence noted that hooked rugs

in the first category employ classic Art Deco motifs in

a straightforward and direct way. He illustrated a number

of examples, with design elements such as diagonals,

concentric ripples, and machinelike repetitions (1). “Hybrid”

Deco rugs combine Deco elements with designs found in

other textiles. Here, Lawrence showed pieces with motifs

taken from nineteenth-century hooked rugs, American

quilts, oriental rugs, and Navajo rugs. Hooked rugs in the

third category, Modernist, reflect designs originally found in

other media, such as Paul Klee paintings, Frank Lloyd Wright

drawings, or even circuit boards.

Lawrence then stepped back to describe the context of

Art Deco design generally. The death, damage, and disruption

of World War I prompted a complete rejection of the ideals

and aesthetic of the Victorian Age and a simultaneous

transition from elite-driven standards of taste to mass

consumerism.

Hooked rugs fit the desire for modern style and mass

consumption. They used inexpensive, widely available

materials: recycled burlap grain sacks for the foundation,

and remnants of old clothing for the pile. A few companies

manufactured such rugs, but most were made by

individuals—generally women aged 10 to 60—weaving for

their own families. Hooking rugs required only simple

equipment and relatively little practice (in comparison with

knotting oriental rugs). Nevertheless, in Lawrence’s view,

some of the women who made these rugs brought

exceptional artistic talent and skilled execution to their

1. “Pure Deco” hooked rug

View from the Fringe 7

Lawrence Kearney on Deco-to-Modernist Hooked Rugs, cont.

projects. Their pieces represent the modern democratization

of design—anyone could do it, for her own home—rather than

the traditional model of artisans creating works for rich

consumers.

Lawrence brought many rugs from his collection,

and used them to illustrate and provide more detail for his

talking points. In the first group were those he characterized

as “pure Deco,” woven from the 1920s through the late

1940s. Lawrence’s examples had simple, emphatic designs,

frequently with repeats. For the most part, the color palette

was cool, with slate blue, gray, teal, and indigo dominating.

Black outlining of design elements was commonly used as

a visual focus.

Lawrence then moved to “hybrid Deco” rugs, with

elements from a number of traditional, typically nineteenth-

century designs. He showed rugs that drew their influences

from Victorian-era flower-and-vine motifs (2), and other

examples with far-flung textile sources including Turkmen

carpets, Navajo Two Grey Hills rugs, and possibly even

Anatolian elibelinde kilims (3).

2. Victorian-style flora on a “hybrid Deco” rug 3. An elibelinde-inspired “hybrid Deco” rug?

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The rugs in Lawrence’s last, and chronologically latest,

category, “Modernist,” were made from the late 1940s

through the 1950s. The examples that he showed (4) utilized

a lighter and more diverse palette, with more primary colors.

In some cases, the design placements were looser, while in

others, design repetitions increased.

Our thanks to Lawrence for sharing his knowledge

about a category of rugs that few NERS members have

explored, and for bringing to the meeting so many examples

to examine “in the flesh”!

Jim Adelson

4. Two of Lawrence’s “Modernist” hooked rugs, exhibiting spare (above) and exuberant (below) design schemes

Lawrence Kearney on Deco-to-Modernist Hooked Rugs, cont.

View from the Fringe 9

In Memoriam: Louise Woodhead Feuerstein

We are saddened to report that former NERS member

Louise Woodhead Feuerstein, 76, died of ovarian cancer

in her Brookline home on September 13. Married to Aaron

Feuerstein in 1988, Louise was instrumental in the redesign

and rebuilding of his family business, Malden Mills, after

a disastrous fire in 1995 burned its Lawrence factories to

the ground.

At the resurrected Malden Mills, Louise created and

ran the retail store and helped administer a division of the

company that made and sold velvet upholstery fabrics.

In addition, she meticulously restored the couple’s historic

second home in Berlin, MA, dyeing and weaving all its

textile furnishings.

But fellow NERS members—at least we veterans—

may best recall Louise from her years at Skinner, then

headquartered in Bolton. Although hired in 1977 to work

in administation, she soon became Skinner’s textile expert.

In May 1983, she organized the first Skinner sale devoted

entirely to rugs and carpets. From then until she left the

auction house to marry Aaron, she ran twice-yearly carpet

sales, arranged many adjunct lectures and panels, and vetted

rugs and textiles for Continental and Americana sales and

on-site estate auctions. Her interest in carpets continued

after her departure from Skinner; for example, she and Aaron

acquired a major fragment of the important seventeenth-

century “von Hirsch” Northwest Persian garden carpet, which

they generously lent to the 1991–92 exhibition “Through the

Collector’s Eye” (no. 31 in the print and digital catalogues,

the latter viewable under “Gallery” on the NERS website).

Also in the early ’90s, in their Brookline home, Louise hosted

Louise Woodhead Feuerstein, at the preview of a

Skinner rug and carpet auction in Bolton, ca. 1987

Future NERS Meetings

• February 28 (venue TBD): Lee Talbot,

“Unraveling Identity: Our Textiles, Our Stories”

• March 28 (Grogan & Co., Dedham):

Michael Grogan, “Thirty-Five Years in Oriental

Rugs”

• April 25 (MFA): “A Night at the MFA, Featuring

Rugs from the Gerard Paquin Collection”

• May (date TBD, Gore Place, Waltham): Picnic

Auctions

Boston: Jan. 25, 2014, Skinner, Oriental Rugs & Carpets

Wiesbaden, Nov. 30, Rippon Boswell, Collectors’ Carpets

Exhibitions

Boston, MFA: “Hippie Chic,” through Nov. 11

Boston, MFA: “Carpets from the Gerard Paquin Collection,”

Nov. 21–Aug. 2014

New York, Metropolitan Museum: “Fifty Years of Collecting

Islamic Art,” through Jan. 6, 2014

New York, Metropolitan Museum: “ Interwoven Globe

1500–1800,” through Jan. 5, 2014

Rug and Textile Events

Photo credits: p. 1 Koos de Jong; pp. 2–4 Walter Denny;

p. 5 (1) Yon Bard, (2) Julia Bailey; pp. 6–8 Yon Bard; p. 9 Julia Bailey.

a meeting of the New Boston Rug Society (the forerunner

of NERS) with Jon Thompson as speaker.

We remember Louise with great admiration and

fondness, and we extend our condolences to Aaron.

The New England Rug Society is an informal,

non-profit organization of people interested

in enriching their knowledge and appreciation

of antique oriental rugs and textiles. Our meetings

are held seven or more times a year. Membership

levels and annual dues are: Single $45, Couple $65,

Supporting $90, Patron $120, Student $25.

Membership information and renewal forms are

available on our website, www.ne-rugsociety.org.;

by writing to the New England Rug Society,

P.O. Box 290393, Charlestown, MA 02129; or by

contacting Jim Sampson at jahome22@gmail.com.

Contributors to this issue: Julia Bailey (editor),

Jim Adelson, Yon Bard. Distributor: Jim Sampson.

NERS 2013–14 Steering Committee: Jim Adelson,

Robert Alimi, Julia Bailey (co-chair), Yon Bard, Louise

Dohanian, Joel Greifinger, Mark Hopkins, Richard Larkin,

Lloyd Kannenberg, Ann Nicholas (co-chair), Jim Sampson,

Jeff Spurr.

If you haven’t already done so, please renew your NERS

membership now! You can pay online using a credit

card: go to www.ne-rugsociety.org/NERS-paypal.htm and follow directions. Alternatively, you can mail your

check, payable to NERS, to our Charlestown address

(see the box opposite).

The New England Rug Society

P.O. Box 290393

Charlestown, MA 02129

In this issue:

November 15 Meeting Preview 1

September Meeting Review 2–4

Skinner Hires Lawrence Kearney 5

Textile Museum Symposium 5

October Meeting Review 6–8

In Memoriam: Louise Woodhead Feuerstein 9

Calendar, Photo Credits 9